


Comes Out Muffled

by yet_intrepid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Child Neglect, Gen, Poverty, Pre-Series, Teenchesters, Weechesters, food insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 22:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day by day, they find some way to eat. Day by day, they manage to never really discuss it.</p><p>December 1994.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Diminishing Inventories

**Author's Note:**

> Set a few months before the flashback portion of s9e7 "Bad Boys." Fic and chapter titles come from the song “Horseradish Road” by the Mountain Goats.

It’s probably the hundred and sixty-fourth time they’ve had this conversation, Sam thinks, but that doesn’t stop him from falling back on his bed with a sigh after zipping shut the mostly-empty food duffel.

“I’m never this hungry when there’s food around,” he says. Just the right tone—light annoyance, hint of laughter, with caution underlying.

“That’s cause you’re a picky little shit,” says Dean. He changes the channel. One click, two clicks, three. Farming documentary, yogurt ad, crappy sitcom.

Crappy sitcom of people eating burgers, though. “Or maybe it’s because you keep thinking about it,” Dean revises, and he clicks the TV off.

“Or maybe it’s just a cruel, as-yet-unexplored function of human anatomy.” Sam stares intently at the ceiling. “You always come back to the whole keep-your-mind-off-it thing. If you’re going to argue it’s psychosomatic, I’m going to need more detail. A theory like that needs sources to be credible.”

“Your face needs sources to be credible,” says Dean.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Good thing I’m a research expert, then.”

“Whatever, geek boy.”

“Whatever, jerk.”

“Bitch,” grumbles Dean, climbing onto Sam’s bed to shove him. But Sam just slides over, makes room. He holds up a deck of cards, too—a silent offer.

The rest of the afternoon is spent playing poker over week-old two-packs of restaurant crackers.

Dean was probably right about the psychosomatic thing, Sam admits to himself as he starts getting into the game, starts griping about Dean’s good hands and swatting at him for showing off when he shuffles. By the time they reach a truce and start crunching the stale crackers, Sam’s spent almost an hour not feeling hungry at all.


	2. Things I Already Know

“It’s called an emergency fund for a reason, Sam.” Dean doesn’t put his foot down often, but right now it’s like he’s planted himself in hardening concrete. “Because it’s for goddamn emergencies.”

Sam tries to be patient, tries not to get carried away. “Okay, so, when does this become an emergency?” he asks. “Food’s almost gone, Dean, and you can’t hustle here because Dad got you both kicked out of the only bar in town before he left. And he said another four, five days. What’s the line that we have to cross before we say, okay, this is an emergency, we can spend seven dollars on groceries now?”

Dean’s face is hard. “We get kicked out of the motel, that’s an emergency. We have to skip town, that’s an emergency. We run out of salt, that’s an emergency. This? This is just, you know, a tight spot.”

Sam looks at him.

He sighs. “Come on, Sam, we’ve been low on rations plenty of times.  _And_  you still get lunch at school.”

Which is true. As soon as they got here, Dean had Bobby make up income reports so they’d qualify for the free lunches program. (It wasn’t really lying, Sam reassured himself; there’s no way Dad’s keeping them above the poverty line.) But that’s not the issue, so Sam keeps his gaze level. Doesn’t even blink. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “But  _you_  don’t.”

Because high school let out Friday, but middle school has another week to go.

“Yeah well, tough luck for me.” Dean’s trying to smirk, but his eyes keep shifting away. “I’m shot of exams and a free man till January. Total misery.”

“Dean!”

“I can take care of myself, Sammy. God.”

And Sam swears to himself he’s not going to stand for this, not going to sit down and shut up while Dean chooses following Dad’s rules about the emergency fund over fixing an actual emergency. But he opens his mouth again and nothing comes out.

He doesn’t know how to tell Dean that sure, he can take care of himself, but he’s showing a worrying inclination not to do so. He doesn’t know how to say that this isn’t normal, that it shouldn’t be normal even for them, that there are churches and charities and freaking government agencies out there to keep people from going hungry when they don’t have money, so why the hell can’t Dean admit this is enough of a problem to justify using the money they’ve got?

He does know that this ought to be an emergency, four days of him living on school lunches and his brother on whatever he can get by scrounging, stealing, and sweet-talking. But Sam also knows his Dad, and he’s seen him counting and re-counting the money in the emergency fund.


	3. Turned Up in Your Purse

The motel room’s empty when Sam comes home from school two days later. He goes through the routine checks, because on the off chance that something’s grabbed Dean and Sam doesn’t realize, Dad’s sure to be beyond pissed. But the salt lines are intact and there’s no damage, no sign of struggle or forced entry anywhere.

So he sits down with pre-algebra and  _Fahrenheit 451_  and he powers through, even though he finds himself losing his place on the page over and over, or flipping his positive and negative signs when he hasn’t done that for months. Eventually, though, the equations check out and he sits biting his lip, angry that he can’t focus on the last chapters of a book that might as well have snapped handcuffs on him the first time he picked it up.

That’s when Dean comes in, and his “hey, Sammy!” is bright and loud, and Sam throws the book down because he smells food. Dean plunks down a takeout bag on the counter and digs his hand into his pocket, coming up with three bills.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Bringing home dead presidents.”

It’s two fives and a ten. Definitely not enough to have takeout every night; Dean’s brought back solid-sized burgers, fries, and a small chocolate milkshake, which has to have made a dent in whatever money he originally had.

Sam doesn’t know how Dean got money in the first place. He doesn’t want to ask; to be honest, he wants to cry, or maybe give Dean a hug. Especially because there’s a milkshake.

But if Winchesters don’t spend emergency funds on food, then they definitely don’t cry and hug over milkshakes.

“Thanks,” Sam says, settling on something nice and neutral. And that’s when he notices that, big as Dean’s smile is, it’s tired, too. So he makes sure the message gets through. “Thanks, Dean.”

“No problem, kiddo,” Dean says, and he ruffles Sam’s hair just a moment before claiming a chair and making quick work of the takeout bag. His burger’s already in his mouth by the time he looks up at Sam again, smiling around it.

“Gross,” says Sam, but then he’s eating too, fighting for the best fries, sipping the milkshake through a straw while Dean digs into it with a plastic spoon.

When the milkshake’s gone, Sam licks off the bottom of his straw and sighs in satisfaction. Tomorrow he’s going to school, and Dean’s going grocery shopping. 


End file.
